


Blue Whale

by ABigRock



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Panic, Trauma, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21592036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABigRock/pseuds/ABigRock
Summary: A short time after the end of the world is narrowly averted, Pickles and Elle travel along the west coast with no particular destination. The emotional fallout from the experience catches up with him.
Relationships: Pickles The Drummer/Original Character(s)





	Blue Whale

He missed the turn for the Blue Whale the first time, sailing right past it at a decent clip.

"Shit," he mumbled. The drive had been stressful. They blew a tire in Lincoln City and she had to change it as the flat grey sky spat a light drizzle. He knew how to do it but she refused his help. A few cars passed as she worked and he glared at them. He flipped the last one off and they honked.

“Stop it,” she chastised, tightening the lug nuts on the spare tire. He shut the door a little too hard getting back in, which earned him a look that he deserved but resented.

They had to drive another couple of miles down the coast to find a lookout where he could painstakingly turn around, all the while envisioning some idiot driver whipping around the blind corner ahead and sending all of them careening off the sheer cliffs and into the frothing ocean below. She offered no comment during this process except to point out the turn when it came around again. It was an old building, and he had second thoughts as soon as he killed the engine. The photos on the site had clearly been unfairly flattering.

"Do you wanna keep going?" he asked. "I think there's another town like ten miles from here. I don't mind if we keep going."

"Why?" She gave him a funny look and opened her door. "We're here, aren't we?"

He unfolded himself from the tiny Volvo-- their replacement was waiting for them in Eugene, thank God-- and stretched hugely. It was nearing sunset. The wind was steady and cool, salt-smelling. Somewhere far below them, seagulls roosting for the evening chattered.

"We don't have to drive so much tomorrow, if you want," he said, twisting his back to crack it.

"I don't mind."

"My back is fucking killing me. Aren't you sore?"

"No, I'm fine." The gravel crunched under her feet as she walked ahead without him.

He grabbed his duffel from the back seat and jogged a bit to catch up. He'd chosen this particular place because the majority of it was built spectacularly and improbably on the edge of the cliff like some of the homes in the San Bernardino Valley, but the landward side was less than impressive. The paint had been blue once, but it had faded over the years to the color of a watery sky. There was no garden or formal courtyard beyond the path and the parking lot was minimally maintained. Around it grew more of the short, spindly pines that covered the landscape like weeds. As he took all of this in, he could also imagine quite vividly the nautically-decorated yellow-lit lobby, and beyond that the modest room, which would have a surprisingly impressive view (they would count on this making up for the exterior) and equally faded dark blue sheets that would smell like cigarettes even though the room was listed as non-smoking.

There were circular stepping stones set into the gravel--they were meant to run the length of the path but whoever had laid them had run out halfway through-- but his wife didn't stick to them because she didn't see them. She never watched her feet. She looked up and around, finding exits, checking off mental boxes. She glanced back at him and he smiled, and as he did a terrible thought bubbled up from the swamp where such thoughts are formed. It made him come to a hard stop, as if he had walked into an icy wind. He shook his head to clear it, but the awful thought persisted, and what it whispered in an evil little voice was that he didn't really know her at all. What he saw, what he loved, was just a composite image. He could list off volumes of facts about her. She was 33. She had committed a terrible crime and paid for it dearly. She told him she loved him and he believed her. She had agreed to be his wife, and sometimes he caught her watching him with an intensity he worried he could not match. He could name her favorite foods, the languages she spoke, her dreams. But he saw clearly, in that awful space of thought, that no matter how much he might try, he could not possibly know what she was thinking. And that made him feel terribly, terribly alone. More alone than he had ever felt, maybe, because he understood the voice was right: he WAS alone. They both were. Their experiences of the world, ones different in almost every way, left them stranded, and though they might cling to each other and find shelter, there were things he would never know about her. Entire days of her life that he would never relive with her. He understood that he would never know the person she had been before the desert, and he ached for that person as much as he would for the fragment left behind. Because, he saw now, she was not a whole person. Not really. That part of her was missing, the part he ached for and deserved. It had been shattered, mutilated, and he was taken short of breath by a physical ache in the space behind his sternum. She stepped over a broken stepping stone and it killed him to see her there so completely alone in so much space. But he didn't rush to her. Instead, he cast his mind out, straining to find hers, casting her name out like a net. But she didn't turn. She couldn’t hear him.

He stood silently in the lobby as if stupefied while she navigated the check-in. The corners of the room seemed to pulse in his peripheral vision, and he held her coat sleeve like a blind man, letting her lead him down the small white-floral papered hallway to their small room, inside which was a queen size bed with faded blue bedding. Outside the large window, a panoramic view of the white-capped Pacific. She closed the door, shot the bolt, and the moment it clicked home he grabbed her and spun her around. He kissed her deeply, groped at her through her coat. She smacked at him, but he didn't stop. He continued thought-screaming her name as he shoved her onto the bed and pulled her shoes off. He unzipped her coat and tore it open. She said something, but he couldn't hear it over the sound of his heart hammering. He went for her pants next, then the soft black underwear. She hollered at him in Hebrew or Arabic and the fact that he didn't know which just made him more frantic. He fumbled with his belt and fly and by the time he had freed himself he was shaking. She was trying to get up to fight him but he shoved her back down and pinned her with his hips. He got his shirt off and threw it to the side, returning to the font of her mouth like a man dying of thirst. He prodded himself against her and she whimpered--she whimpered and clung to him and he buried himself inside her and she gasped and he thought it couldn't be possible to feel so many things at once without something breaking. He pressed his lips to the velvet pulse point below her ear and whispered her name and she arched up against him so he said it again. She moaned and he told her he loved her. She whispered in her honey mead voice something he couldn't understand, and he had to cover his mouth to stifle a terrible little sound. The headboard smacked and the springs in the bed creaked and they combined with her staccato breathing to make music. 

"I love you," he heard himself say.

She took his face in her hands and saw him--him, the person manipulating the puppet, and not the mask he presented to the world. 

"I love you," she said. "I love you."

He made her body sing. She cried out the private name she had given him, the one only spoken in the depths of despair like this, and it sent him over the edge, made him whimper like he had been shot, made him go at her so hard her breath came in shallow, uneven bursts until he couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped, lightheaded, legs weak and shaking. Waves of soothing bliss washed over him, revived him. He grinned and laughed. She was beautiful, defiled, a masterpiece. He couldn’t help but admire her, while she lay beneath him, lips parted, hair flung over her eyes.They were both slow to recover. He kissed her forehead, complimented her, and laughed at the way she had to catch her breath enough to tell him to shut up. When they had both regained their senses, he sat up a bit more and started to say something, but he was cut off by what he thought was a cough. He stifled it and tried to continue but another came, and then another, and they turned into sobs that wracked his entire body as if he was being shocked. He scrambled off and away, almost falling off the bed, but she brought him back to her. She held him tight against her chest--he hadn't even realized he’d forgotten to take her shirt off-- and in one move he shrugged the weight of the last two years off and laid it in her lap. Weightless, terrified, he clung to her, and she held him until the ugly sobbing eventually abated and he could breathe enough to ruin himself even more.

"You deserve someone better than me," he croaked, anguished.

"I don't want someone better."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

She ran her fingers through his beard, which had grown longer since they'd started the trip.

"I don't understand why you're with me,” he said.

"Because I love you."

"Why?"

"When we're together, I'm happy."

“You could be happier.”

“Maybe.”

"I'm sorry.”

"For what?"

"Everything. Me. I’m so fucked up. None of this should be mine. It should be yours. You’re the one who cares about people. I don’t care about anyone except you. I don’t care about this house or my fucked up life or my music. I just don’t fucking care about anything except you and making you happy, and I’m sorry for that. There’s something fucking wrong with me and I deserve to be alone."

The statement lingered, but she didn’t touch it. He felt as if he was fading, like a reverse Polaroid. He was nearly invisible when she gently patted his shoulder and he sat up a bit to let her out. She padded to the bathroom and he heard the water kick on. She reappeared and slipped off her shirt. 

"Come." She offered her hand. He didn’t take it. His body was heavy and he felt no need to move it. He felt disfigured, wretched.

"Come," she said again.

The long, empty look he gave her had no effect, so he was forced to drag himself, inch by inch, out of the bed. He took off his pants and boxers along the way, barely lifting his feet, and allowed her to lead him to the bath. It was one of those nice, big tubs with jets, so there was plenty of room. She sat behind him and pulled him down so he was leaning against her. He tilted his head up and to look at her.

"Why are you with me?" he asked. "How can you stand me?"

"I love you."

"I don't deserve it."

She let the statement linger and then fade away as if he had never said it at all. He closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted. Her heartbeat thumped steadily near his left ear and the water was very warm. He didn't even notice that he was dozing off. She kept him afloat while he slept. Outside, it had begun to rain.


End file.
